Unlimited Power 03: The Sinful Ruler

In the end, that guild disappeared quite soon. Considering their numbers, Jake assumed that they weren't anything special, so what was dragging the attention of the players in the town was another thing…

"Let's get going," Jake said and then looked around the forest. "If we follow this path, we should be able to make some progress."

"Since we are taking it easy, why don't we follow them?" Lana asked. "We can save time searching for the dungeon later if we do that."

"In this type of game, people don't like being tailed," Jake said. "Besides, we still have to search for the dungeon in the desert. We don't need to hurry with the fifth map when we still have two before it."

While that seemed logical, Lana still wanted to follow those guys. She had a feeling that they were about to accomplish something that wasn't just only defeating a dungeon boss. Louise was also curious, but not enough to follow them. Besides, the last thing she wanted right now was to draw unnecessary attention.

Nevertheless, while following Jake's lead, they began to walk toward the center of the forest. Thanks to their current power level, the group advanced pretty fast. They didn't reach the inner layer of the forest where they would be able to fight bees pretty much every single moment. Still, they reached a point where Louise and Lana were having a hard time since they didn't have the chance to recover their mana.

"I guess this place is fine," Jake said, and he watched five bees flying toward them.

"Hey, don't underestimate us," Lana said. "We still can fight."

"And you will," Jake said. "We will stay here to safely level up our skills. I am also a bit tired due to the recent events, so I don't want to try too hard."

It didn't seem like Jake was being considered. After all, he told Louise to attack the monsters with her magic. At the same time, he recovers his mana a bit faster with Meditation. Lana also helped, but Louise pretty much could do everything by herself… as long as the enemies use mana, she won't run out of energy. That being said, a few times, the bees just charged without using any mana. So, Jake had to get up and finish them off. That being said, he only used Mana Blade for that. He wanted to make the skill stronger since its level escalated the power of his strength tremendously. Jake didn't want to her be over-leveled and make the battles against the bosses boring. Still, after hearing what Luke said, he felt like he needed to become even stronger and faster than before.

The next few hours passed in the blink of an eye, and the party decided to log off after they completed their mission. It was past eight in the evening, so Jake didn't have time for a third round. It was better to make dinner and then hit the sack a little earlier than usual. In any case, while Jake was making dinner, the girls looked bored out of their minds.

"I get the feeling that I am getting addicted to that game…" Lana said. "I want to complete another difficult mission… I want to defeat a boss without letting any of us suffer any damage."

"I get your feeling… but breaks are important," Louise said while she was tapping on her phone.

"What are you doing?" Lana asked and then tried to take a peek at the screen of the cell phone.

"I was doing some search about that guild we saw earlier and the mission of the fifth map," Louise replied. "There are many rumors about that mission… Apparently, some players disappear after completing it."

Jake had heard of that, and he was surprised that those two didn't. Nevertheless, it seemed that they were reaching a weird point in the game. However, Jake could imagine that Luke had finished the program, but he didn't disappear… something was odd.

"Did the members of the guild disappear?' Lana asked.

"No… they completed the mission and then returned to the town," Louise replied. "Apparently, they sounded pretty disappointed with that."

So, was that just a baseless rumor? That was a relief but also disappointing… Still, Jake had a feeling that something was missing, but he couldn't quite say what it was.

"Did you find anything regarding the number of missions currently available?" Jake asked.

"Let's see… apparently, the game was launched with five initial missions, and since then, two extra missions have been added every month," Louise replied.

Jake assumed that few people knew about the special missions, so those probably weren't part of the count. Jake should have asked that asshole Justin what they did to obtain the special mission. If Jake could compare their actions, he would find an answer and perhaps a clue about that weird story.

"You know, I always wondered… why divide the game in servers according to the region?" Louise asked. "The game would be more competitive, and parties would be easier to form if people all over the world could play together."

"Language barrier is the reason," Jake replied. "Besides, since the goal of the missions is basically hunt and then find the dungeon in the map, some troublesome players would try to monopolize the dungeons and let only people in their region use it."

Louise understood the logic, but she couldn't help but think that the logic was flawed. Since only a few could buy the expensive game and helmet, and even fewer people were selected to gain those for free, the number of players was severely lacking on the maps. Not to mention, they are huge and hard to localize themselves, so the chances of meeting other players were small. The game had too many weird features…